Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey.pdf - Bookstacks

made such a point of your providing nothing extraordinary: besides, if
he had not said half so much as he did, he has always such an excellent
dinner at home, that sitting down to a middling one for one day could
not signify.”
“I wish I could reason like you, for his sake and my own. Goodbye.
As tomorrow is Sunday, Eleanor, I shall not return.”
He went; and, it being at any time a much simpler operation to
Catherine to doubt her own judgment than Henry’s, she was very soon
obliged to give him credit for being right, however disagreeable to her
his going. But the inexplicability of the general’s conduct dwelt much on
her thoughts. That he was very particular in his eating, she had, by her
own unassisted observation, already discovered; but why he should say
one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most
unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood? Who
but Henry could have been aware of what his father was at?
From Saturday to Wednesday, however, they were now to be
without Henry. This was the sad finale of every reflection: and Captain
Tilney’s letter would certainly come in his absence; and Wednesday she
was very sure would be wet. The past, present, and future were all
equally in gloom. Her brother so unhappy, and her loss in Isabella so
great; and Eleanor’s spirits always affected by Henry’s absence! What
was there to interest or amuse her? She was tired of the woods and the
shrubberies—always so smooth and so dry; and the abbey in itself was
no more to her now than any other house. The painful remembrance of
the folly it had helped to nourish and perfect was the only emotion
which could spring from a consideration of the building. What a
revolution in her ideas! She, who had so longed to be in an abbey! Now,
there was nothing so charming to her imagination as the unpretending
comfort of a well-connected parsonage, something like Fullerton, but
better: Fullerton had its faults, but Woodston probably had none. If
Wednesday should ever come!
It did come, and exactly when it might be reasonably looked for. It
came—it was fine—and Catherine trod on air. By ten o’clock, the chaise
and four conveyed the two from the abbey; and, after an agreeable drive
of almost twenty miles, they entered Woodston, a large and populous
village, in a situation not unpleasant. Catherine was ashamed to say
how pretty she thought it, as the general seemed to think an apology
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